“After chronicling the temptations and foibles of earnest young Catholics in The Story of My Purity, Francesco Pacifico turns his attention to Italy’s other major religion: ‘Cool.’ On the trail of Italian hipsters from Rome to Williamsburg, Class is both savage and tender, like Antonioni’s camera following Monica Vitti on her adventures, or—as the author might prefer—a vintage MTV rockumentary. A novel about the costs of ‘Americanization,’ in all senses, from Italy’s most Yankophilic and most intelligently Yankophobic novelist.”―Marco Roth

“Class is a novel about rich kids who make movies, music, and art that respond to the microscopic cultural nuances of a closed system. It’s about what happens when progressivism is watching a documentary about poor people, and culture is collecting obscure consumer goods. It’s a satire of nepotism, and the mechanisms that coddle privileged young people into thinking they are living original lives. This novel clarified some things for me, about the difference between genius and vanity, and what’s worth paying attention to, and what it’s okay to despise. Francesco Pacifico’s characters are finely tuned algorithms: they can generate the perfect playlist, but they can’t sing any songs.”―Emily Witt

n+1 is a print and digital magazine of literature, culture, and politics published three times a year. We also post new online-only work several times each week and publish books expanding on the interests of the magazine.